The Pine City Area Boys hosted Sauk Rapids-Rice on Wednesday night.
The Dragons beat the Storm earlier in the regular season by 2, but the playoffs are a different season.
But as the game began Pine City got into a power play early on. McCall Leger was able to capitalize and score the 1st goal of the game. But shortly after the Storm came back with a vengeance and scored 2 unanswered goals and only needed to shots to take a 2-1 lead early in the 1st. All momentum had fully swung in the Storm favor and the energy the Dragons had seemed to dissolve. Pine City fought back and eventually Brady Berglund scored to tie the game at 2. They weren't done scoring though, and Logan Kirby scored to help retake the lead 3-2.
The 2nd period began to get more physical and chippy which lead to a SRR penalty to put the Dragons back on the power play. Kirby wasn't done scoring and only a minute into the 2nd period he was on the board again. Their defense was playing well but Aaron Rootkie was making some impressive saves in the net. His teammates though helped him out by scoring for a second time in the period on a Blake Painovich goal to take a 5-2 lead. Not long after taking a 3 goal lead, the Dragons found themselves on the penalty kill. Despite that it felt like they were on the power play as for most of the 2 minutes they were aggressive and played in the Storm zone. Just as the power play ended Pine City was caught behind the play and the Storm took advantage and scored to cut the lead to 2. Once again the teams played physical and neither team could find any clean shots to the net. But with 7 seconds left Kirby scored once again for the hat trick giving them a 6-3 lead going into the break.
A few minutes into the 3rd period the Dragons were once again on the penalty kill. But again they were aggressive and played most of the time on offense. That aggressiveness paid off as McCall Leger poked a pass away and had a breakaway shot that he slung past the goaltender to give the Dragons a 7-3 lead. After that Pine City had the game well in hand and their defense and goaltending continued to make things tough on SRR. Leger would put the game away for good with his hat trick goal and they went on to win 8-3.
The Dragons will play a familiar foe in the section semi finals. They'll be on the road to play Monticello for the 3rd time this season on Saturday.
Scoring
Pine City:
McCall Leger and Logan Kirby 3
Brady Berglund and Blake Painovich 1
Photo Credit: Four Seasons Photography
